fplanque: off topic

I was supposed to fly to Seattle today... but thanks to Air France flight attendants and one of their strikes, I'm litterally grounded in France... It's been 4 days now!

Of course I wish there were other options for flying non stop from Paris to the west coast, but I'm afraid there aren't a lot. I even suspect the flights that have been canceled are precisely the ones with the least competition available. Bast (I mean: sensible capitalists! )

Anyway, here's a couple of things I learnt while canceling my hotel and domestic flight reservations:

• Orbitz will charge you $25 when canceling an hotel reservation (more than 24 hours in advance) whereas canceling at reservation made directly with the hotel would generally be at no charge. On the other hand, booking through Orbitz oftentimes gets you a better rate. So it's a close call...
• Canceling a hotel within the last 24 hours prior to arrival can be super expensive. You need to try and cancel as soon as possible.
• Canceling my $186 flight with United from Seattle to LA cost me $100 charged by United an $30 charged by Orbitz. The remaining $56 credit is valid for one year but is going to be a pain to reuse (no automated procedure).
• Had I waited to actually be in Seattle before booking that flight (i-e: booked it tonight), it would only have cost me $20 more ($207 total). I think I'm done with booking domestic flights way in advance.

Still, I really really should find out how to not rely on Air France any more... 'coz you know... they made their point: they're just unreliable!

Matt from WordPress was holding a casual WordPress meetup in Paris today. I thought I should drop by and say hello... Meet the legend, you know!

(Do you realize WordPress and b2evolution actually both spun off the b2 blog software at the same time?)

It was nice chatting with Matt as well as Tony (Sphere), Xavier (NetVibes), StuFF mc (Pomcast) and the others.

(maybe I should go out more often? ... or sleep more, judging by the picture! )

Yesterday I saw Michael Moore's Sicko movie.

First off, let me say that it's absolutely terrifying when you see the stories of all those people literally ripped off by their health insurance company! Boy I was worried about that stuff before (when considering to move to the US), now I consider it as the #1 pitfall if I ever actually want to relocate over there.

Anyway, as always with Michael Moore, the reality is twisted to make it more... tasty? For example when he comes to France and shows how a "middle class family" lives... he doesn't actually show a middle class family.

He asks them how much they make and they say 8000 € a month. Well... the average salary in France is around $1500 a month. Now a family where both parent work will make an average on 3000 €/month. More than 2.5 times less than what Moore depicts as a "middle class" home.

On the other hand, the rest of the story about how the government takes care of our health is basically accurate... with a lot of details overly simplified...

Again, he states we pay a lot of taxes (I won't deny ) but doesn't mention that those taxes aren't actually enough to cover for the costs. The healthcare system here is growing a humongous debt year after year. For some reason, it doesn't seem to implode though...

So how much can you actually trust the guy on accuracy?

Now I wish someone from the US would deny it all and tell me that if you cut your fingers off, you'll get them fixed, no matter what. And that if you get cancer, you'll get treatment without having to put a mortgage on your house... if you have one. That kind of crap would never happen in France. (I mean, it hasn't happened yet...)

The good thing: it helps me see the good side of France ('coz I could bitch about France for hours...)

Ok, so I'm back to France... and guess what: I'm actually seeing the light of day!!

When I flew back from California last October I had the hardest time ever to sync back to European time. This time... it might be smoother...

There is a 9 hour time difference between California and France. That means that when you normally wake up at 10 am California time, it is already 7 pm France time. So when you fly over this way, you tend to wake up in the evening... stay up all night... and finally feel sleepy in the morning. Do that in the winter when the days are shorter and the nights longer... and you literally won't get to see the light of day for weeks! Guaranteed ending up somehow depressed...

This time I tried to prepare real hard for the trip back home. I would go to sleep really early for the last few days in California, then get up every morning around 5 am (2 pm French timezone).

So I planned I would keep that rhythm when coming back: wake up at 2pm and manage it from there...

Of course it didn't go as planned! Does it ever anyway?

I couldn't sleep for the whole overnight flight. T'was actually the most turbulent flight I think I ever experienced. We landed at sth like 11 am yesterday and I got home at something like 1pm. Had to stack up the fridge first ad basically got to sleep around 6 pm, just when daylight would start to fade a little...

I woke up several times during the night but fell asleep again shortly thereafter, until 6am when I just couldn't sleep any longer. Luckily the day would dawn around 6:30 and I'm now feeling almost okay.

Of course I always talk about jet lag on planes and nobody seems to have ever cracked it really... However, I just felt so bad last time that I keep thinking there's room for improvement, at least for myself.

So far, this time seems to good to be true. But on the other hand there's one thing that makes it a lot easier: summer time! Days are long enough to make it easy to wake up at some point when it's *not* dark outside. And daylight helps, really, a lot!

Anyway, we'll see how it goes in the next few days...

Let's get to work!!